Way back in 1991 when I was returning to Auckland after five years in London, I fretted that I was leaving a teeming, polyglot city to return to a monoculture. Happily, it turned out not to be that way. The Maori cultural and political renaissance was manifest, and second and third generation immigrant kids had flowed into the central city. It was a better, more vital place.

At the same time, of course, Pacific Island families were being steadily gentrified out of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, the way they were out of Parnell in the 1970s. I'm not making any silly post-racial claim for the place. But Vaimoana Tapaleao's story in the Herald today, covering a New Zealand Geographic story based on new census figures, says this:

More than 200 ethnic groups are recorded as living here and Auckland is considered more diverse than London or Sydney, with 40 per cent of its population made up of different ethnicities.

The results indicate an ongoing positive trend in attitudes towards Asians although it does go up and down. In 2013, there was a drop in positivity (or warmth in Asia New Zealand Foundation’s terms), as negative feelings went from 23 percent to 27 percent but this was balanced out by those whose attitudes had not changed or the 14 percent whose warmth had improved.

I would suggest that there are several factors being played out here. One is the size of Asian immigrant communities. At nearly a quarter of Auckland’s population, it would be unsurprising to see some concern at the size of these populations, especially as these communities group in particular suburbs (ethnoburbs) or business areas (ethnic precincts). This is reflected in one key reason provided by those who voiced concern – the increasing size of Asian populations. This is supported by added concerns about “Asians sticking together” or “not adjusting to New Zealand culture”.

However, given the size of these Asian populations – and the rapidity with which they have grown – it might be just as relevant to ask why there is not more concern amongst non-Asian New Zealanders.

There's evidence of a generally positive national attitude towards immgrants relative to other countries. A 2011 MBIE paper included this graph on the percentage of people who agree that "it is a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different races, religions, and cultures":

Again: tolerance, welcoming and real inclusion are quite separate things. None of them mean racism doesn't exist, still less economic inequality -- although social and economic gaps in Auckland are as much to do with geography as ethnicity. But it feels like a while since someone panicking about Mandarin being spoken on the high street was considered a headline.

Diverse Auckland has been a fact for long enough that kids have grown up with each other. When I put together the Orcon Next web video series for the Herald last year, I wound up featuring Aucklanders of Maori, Pasifika, Chinese, Indian and European heritage without even trying -- they were just the interesting people. And it just felt like Auckland. Am I being too rosy in thinking that this is a significant social change we are navigating more smoothly than might ever have been expected?

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Based on my own experience (and I only have anecdotal evidence to offer here), I'd agree that Aucklanders as a whole are fairly tolerant, but some parts of the city are far more accepting than others. When I was growing up in south Auckland - Manurewa, Wiri and Papatoetoe - my mixed heritage was never a hindrance and was very rarely a talking point (although my unusual name has always drawn attention, but that's not altogether related). The only times I've faced racist comments in Auckland have been in the inner suburbs, and while they only occurred a few times they were particularly unpleasant.

What I've found very interesting (for lack of a better word) are the reactions from strangers to my two children. My firstborn inherited my latent white genes and has pale skin and light hair, while my second child has dark hair and olive skin like mine. The eldest is five years old and nobody has ever asked me about his ethnic background. The youngest was only seven weeks old the first time a stranger asked where we were "from".

People in Auckland are accepting of diverse ethnic backgrounds, yes, but if you aren't white it's still something to be noticed and commented on.

People in Auckland are accepting of diverse ethnic backgrounds, yes, but if you aren't white it's still something to be noticed and commented on.

Definitely. Racism is still alive and well in Auckland, often it's just obscured under the inherent embarrassed politeness many Aucklanders cultivate.

It's certainly better here than other parts of NZ, for what that's worth, and I do think there has been a slow shift towards being more inclusive. When my family and I moved here in the mid 1990s from Hastings, we also moved away from a homogenous society that saw us as "weird" (my father was the only person I knew who had an accent, and my sister was Māori while I and my mother plainly weren't) and into a city that welcomed us with a refreshing indifference. No one cared that we were "different", because we weren't that different here.

I do remember witnessing (or more often hearing about) fairly blatant examples of racism in later years, though, particularly directed at my sister and at Chinese friends. Those incidents aren't really mine to discuss, but as an outsider to those experiences I do get the impression that they've become less common as the years have passed.

For me the measure of cultural diversity is the food. When I first went overseas I couldn't understand why so many cities only had one cuisine. But if you eat around Auckland you can have almost any cuisine. Dominion road ranges from Santhiya's Sth Indian/malaysian, through Turkish kebabs, the whole gamut of chinese varieties in Balmoral as well as all along Dominion Rd, Sushi and Japanese at Banzai, great pizza at Gorgeous, a game restaurant at Cazador, through to classic modern kiwi international at Meridiths and Two Fifteen.

All over Auckland you get a huge variety of amazing foods all over the place, at Markets and little ethnic eating houses where two dishes are great and the rest of the menu is best avoided. And our top restaurants have all benefited from that influence, both in the huge variety of produce available now and in the staff coming through who just happen to have this great family recipe for ...

From my stomach's perspective Auckland is a hugely diverse city and that makes me very happy ... and quite hungry now :).

I know some people get annoyed with the "think of the restaurants!" thing, but yeah, Dominion Road has transformed in the past decade. For me, it's Avondale Markets -- I ride there on my bike on a Sunday morning and for an hour I'm in diverse Auckland, where people from many different ethnic background trade, and trade with each other. God, I love the place.

A 2011 MBIE paper included this graph on the percentage of people who agree that “it is a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different races, religions, and cultures”

From following the link it looks as if that chart came from a 2000 study that was centred on Europe, plus MBIE pulled Australian data from a 2003 study, and the NZ data was taken from another study in 2008. Australia and parts of Europe might have increased (or decreased) in the 5 to 8 years since NZ data was added.

Nevertheless it’s great to see NZ circling the top of that graph. What I’d be really interested in seeing, though, is how some of the other societies rate beyond Europe. Maybe the likes of South American, Asian and African nations. It could be quite fascinating to gauge who thinks their societies benefit from outside cultures, and then maybe dig a little deeper to discover what that actually means to them when they say that, what they’re already experiencing and what they expect from mixing other cultures in. Like, if lots of people in a society are very accepting, is that because they’re already feeling very secure with maintaining their own culture? Why do they feel that way when some others obviously don’t? Do people who answer that question only think of the other cultures they're already mostly aware of?

Define diversity, though. Auckland also houses a shitload of fundamentalist Christian homophobes and transphobes- Bob McCoskrie/Family First, Colin Craig/the Conservative Party, Family Life International (conservative Catholics), Ian Wishart/Investigrunt, Sky TV fundamentalist channel Shine Television, etc. And also note the Con Party's anti-Treaty perspectives and its stated intent to make it more difficult for foreign workers to enter the country.

So okay, I'm a Canterbury boy and I won't make excuses for my home town ChCh's white supremacist moron problem. Lianne Dalziel and the ChCh Police need to crack down hard on those nauseating racist misfits and their attempted intimidation of Christchurch's East and South Asian communities.

yes I agree - very diverse. As a bus driver I can see this, and even that bus users are perhaps more likely to be non European. Woo hoo there is hope for public transport. One thing that I do like is hearing how enduring the typical 'Kiwi' accent is and the stages of it evolving.

As a bus driver I can see this, and even that bus users are perhaps more likely to be non European.

Now that's an ear-to-the-ground perspective! I've always loved that about Auckland: riding the bus and hearing all the different accents and languages, and trying to place them.

The community of Brazilian exchange students who catch the Devonport bus every day are notorious for turning certain trips into a raucous occasion, full of Portugese and English swearwords, but the place wouldn't be the same without them.

The Primary School my wife is a DP at with close to 800 children has to get in speakers of 21 languages to conduct parent-teacher interviews. The latest being Pashtun and Nepali. The school is great example of inclusiveness being a unconscious competence, both with so many ethnic groups present but also the 40 or so severely physically & intellectually disabled children who are involved and engaged in playground games and sports as much as possible by the other children.

yep - and on Dominion, Sandringham and Manukau Rds - Asian, Indian, and various Europeans all chattering away on their phones as well as to each other make an orchestra of language the bus norm. But the little gems of Kiwi drawl/inflection popping up within other accents, makes me smile as I see that as a real community evolving in a personal and unique way.

Here in Welly, diversity is a given, and there’s more to it than just the embassies and High Commissions. Even then, it’s not free of racial incidents - isolated as they are even though I’ve hardly ever experienced one personally. The boyfriend of one of my Twitter followers was given a black eye by a couple of pre-loaded young women on Courtenay Pl not too long ago, who probably would have been too dumb anyway to tell the difference between a Chinese and a Japanese.

I’ve wondered for years whether there is actually any useful metric at all for diversity. It’s not a trivial question, because people use “more diverse” all the time, like it’s a meaningful concept. But what does it actually mean? Can a number be put to it? If not, can we at least order from most to least diverse? Can we ever say we’re there yet, if there is no measurable milestone of any kind?

ETA: I guess we can measure the entropy of the racial data, but does anyone?

I see the old Nazi/Romantic Nationalist 'Blut und Boden' still burns brightly for roughly half of Germans and Austrians (according to the chart). Dear oh dear. Still, I guess you could say the same about ethnically-cleansing Israelis.

For some time now, Auckland Libraries' selfcheck machines give you the option of English, Maori, Mandarin and Korean (possibly others as I write this). May seem like a meaningless little footnote but just another sign of diversity just built into the everyday. You have to really stop and look to realise how much things have changed in the space of a few decades.

I do regard a broader range of faces and voices as a good thing, though, and I’m intrigued by how many people seem to feel the same way.

I do , and I suspect most people reading this will too , but it might be a different story on another blog. I remember a post on Whale Oil about the benefits of a mono cultural society but can't find it now .